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This is one of my favorite times of the year. There are so many ways to have fun during this season. Spend time with your family! Hug someone! Make a surprise for a friend! You don’t have to buy something to give a wonderful gift.

Since my favorite comic is Calvin and Hobbes, I wanted to share these winter-themed strips…I hope they make you laugh. Thanks to Bill Watterson for coming up with such a wonderful cartoon.

I have used several image editing applications over the years. My favorite has been Paint Shop Pro, and more recently Paint.NET. I haven’t done anything overly exotic in the past, and in fact I still have Paint Shop Pro version 7 (from when it was developed by Jasc). Paint.NET is a completely free photo editing application, and is very impressive. However, I am currently involved with a new opportunity and found myself diving headfirst into the power that is Adobe Photoshop.

I needed to display the copyright symbol in a footer, and I wanted to do so without digging through the character map. I love keyboard shortcuts, so I set out to find one. I found that you can fall back to the old “Alt-ASCII” standby! Here are a few common ones:

To use any of the above while in text mode, simply hold down the Alt key, type the 4-digit code using your keypad and then release the Alt key. The character will appear and behave just like regular text.

Do you have a symbol you can’t find? Leave a comment and I’ll see if I can find it!

I had a recent need for conference calling, and decided to sign up for several services to try them out. Conference calling is a very hot commodity in today’s market, especially during these economic times. You can reach out to so many people for such a small cost, it is logical for many businesses, freelancers and even personal calls.

I decided to investigate several options, beginning with the lowest price. There are several free options available, the most notable being Free Conference. How can you go wrong with free, right? If you’re using a service for internal use within your company, a family gathering or some other instance where you don’t mind a stripped down service then go for it. It’s simple to use, but very basic and you have to pay your own long distance. If you want toll-free service it’s 10¢/minute per person, and you also gain access to several features such as call recording and playback.

The next option I tried was AccuConference. I love their product and feature set, it really is a great deal. They don’t have a free option, but have inexpensive flat rate plans (you pay long distance to connect) or their toll free plan is only 9.9¢/minute per person. You have access to the same feature set regardless of your plan, which is great. They also offer free call recording, desktop controls, pre-conference and a ton of other features.

My final option was Star Conferencing. At 3.9¢/minute per person they were one of the cheapest toll-free option and seemed to still have a nice feature set. I later found out that they are a marketing site forPremiere Global. The rate is definitely great, but there is a catch. You prepay for 500 minutes per month, which amounts to a $19.99 monthly fee whether you use it or not.

I found out about this “catch” when a $ 19.99 fee appeared on my credit card statement. I emailed Star Conferencing right away about the charge, I was sure I had not signed up for a plan with a monthly fee. I received a quick response that my inquiry had been forwarded to their billing company. This was the first bad sign because being forwarded is similar to being transferred within an IVR: you are the hot potato that no one wants.

After no response for 2 days, I again emailed Star Conferencing and finally heard from their “billing company” the next day. I was told that they only offered one plan, it is $19.95 per month and I am free to cancel at anytime. Since I had never used the service, I asked if the fee could be refunded. The response was “Per our Terms and Conditions, the monthly fee of $19.99, which includes 500 minutes, will be automatically charged to the credit card on file regardless of the number of minutes used. Charges will be applied each month the account is active including the month cancelled.”

Well, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I canceled my account and responded that I had never used the service or cost them anything, and would they please credit this amount. Their final response was that they made a “one-time exception” and credited ONE of my fees…but the second fee will still be charged because I canceled after my billing date.

At this point I give up. I’ve wasted enough time and Internet bandwidth, and decided I would rather blog about it then ask for my other $20. I’ll just keep my AccuConference account and be happy. They don’t charge me anything if I don’t use the service.

One of my favorite online utilities is Google Maps. They were one of the first to implement dynamic scrolling for maps (with the click-and-drag), and very nice piece of DHTML. I enjoy smooth, feature rich browser interfaces, and theirs is a great one. Their team created (yet again) a product that leads the market.

Prior to Google Maps, the best option was probably MapQuest. They were ok, but became too commercialized…always suggesting a hotel, gas station or eatery along your route. While that information may have been helpful, it cluttered up the screen and was a pain to work with. Their scrolling consisted of clicking the edge of the screen to move the viewport, which was terribly inconvenient.

We bought a new house in a rural area just over a year ago, so I often map addresses I don’t recognize using Google Maps just to see how far away they are. Yes, it’s a geeky thing to do, but I think it’s fun. Because of that, my home address is my default location and always appears when I land on Google Maps. Much to my surprise, I disappeared in early November! My address was there in late October, but suddenly Google Maps couldn’t find me! I searched for a few other streets in my neighborhood, and finally found a couple. I panned around and found my street, but it was not labeled. Then I checked Street View (another scary-but-cool feature of Google Maps) and found that data was still current.

So Google had Street View but no GIS data for my location. A rather odd combination, since the converse seems more logical. Who to ask in a situation like this? None other than Google (the search engine, of course!). After some research, it seems that Google has begun updating their map information to also include parcel data. I couldn’t find much regarding their data source(s), but I did find an interesting blog post about it.

After panning around my subdivision, I did notice parcel lines but I cannot remember if they were there before. I don’t think they were, which would make sense, but I just never noticed. So what do do? I love Google Maps and don’t want to use another provider, so I poked around and found this Google Maps help article on how to Report a Problem. I followed the steps hoping for a resolution of some kind.

I am happy to report that, as of today, my street is back online! My exact address isn’t pinpointed, but Google Maps drops a push pin on my street with a note stating that “Placement on map is approximate.” Hey, I’ll take it! It has been about 3 weeks since I reported the issue and, given the volume of reports Google is likely dealing with after this update, that’s not bad at all. I received a confirmation email from them after my submission, but have not heard anything from them since.